International Advisory Board Members

Richard J. Goldstone is widely regarded by the international community as one of the leading advocates for justice and human rights in the world today. Judge Goldstone was the Chief Prosecutor of the United Nations Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. From 1991 to 1994, he chaired what became known as the Goldstone Commission, an independent judicial commission that investigated activities and people who posed a threat to the restoration of civil rights during the transition to post-apartheid South Africa. During his career, he has addressed problems of fidelity to law in unjust regimes and worked to define judicial ethics for international judges. He was educated at King Edward VII School and the University of the Witwatersrand, where he graduated in 1962. From August 1999 to December 2001, he was the chairperson of the International Independent Inquiry on Kosovo. He is the Honorary President of the Human Rights Institute of the International Bar Association, and he was also a member of the Independent Inquiry Committee into the U.N. Oil for Food Programme (the Volcker Committee). He chaired a United Nations Committee to advise on the archives of the Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. Since 2002, he has been a faculty director of the Brandeis Institute for International Judges. He has served as a visiting professor at Harvard, Georgetown, Fordham, Stanford, Yale, New York University and the University of Virginia School of Law. In 2008, he was named the recipient of the MacArthur Award for International Justice and as the first “The Hague Peace Philosopher.” In April 2009, he was named to head a fact-finding mission investigating alleged war crimes during the conflict in Gaza from December 2008 to January 2009. He was a member of a Commission of Jurists appointed in 2012 to inquire into the cause of the death of UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld, who was killed in an aircraft crash in 1961. (The Commission's 2013 report is available here.) Judge Goldstone succeeded Kofi Annan as Chairman of the International Advisory Board of the Coalition for the International Criminal Court. In 2014 he joined the newly established Sorensen Center for International Justice at CUNY Law School, named for Founding Chair of the Ethics Center's Board Ted Sorensen, as its inaugural scholar-in-residence.

Jules Bernstein '57, labor lawyer, Washington D.C.

Jules Bernstein is a Washington, D.C.-based labor lawyer who has advocated for workers’ rights for more than a half-century. He has represented several of the country’s largest labor unions. In 1970, he served as union counsel when 250,000 U.S Postal Service workers went on strike. As a result, they obtained substantial wage increases, the right to collective bargaining and the first of many subsequent negotiated labor contracts. In the 1980s, he sued the Postal Service after discovering that postal employees were not being properly compensated on the job and were not being paid for work performed at home. Following years of litigation, 500,000 postal workers won retroactive wages and damages. While counsel to the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, he helped organize the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963. He and his wife, Linda Lipsett, operate a “mom and pop” labor law firm, where they specialize in Fair Labor Standards Act litigation. He serves on the board of directors of the National Labor College, Interfaith Worker Justice and the National Employment Law Project. At Brandeis, he established the Louis D. Brandeis Legacy Fund for Social Justice, which supports Brandeis students, enhances campus life, and promotes the issues of social justice that the former U.S. Supreme Court justice championed throughout his life. In 2012 the Louis D. Brandeis Legacy Fund for Social Justice provided important funding for the first 'DEIS Impact, a weeklong "festival of social justice" at Brandeis, and continues to support that successful program, now in its fourth year. He received the Brandeis Alumni Achievement Award in 2007. Bernstein earned his J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School and his LL.M. in labor law from the New York University Law School.

Thomas Buergenthal H '11, former Judge of the International Court of Justice, Washington D.C.

A United States citizen, Thomas Buergenthal was a judge on the 15-member International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague from 2000 until his resignation in September 2010. He is a former President of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and a former member of the UN Human Rights Committee and of the U. N. Truth Commission for El Salvador. Recipient of the Gruber Foundation International Justice Prize and member of the Ethics Commission of the International Olympic Committee, he has been re-appointed Lobingier Professor of Comparative Law and Jurisprudence at the George Washington University Law School, where he taught before his election to the ICJ. He has also been re-named to the Committee on Conscience of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council. Judge Buergenthal is author or co-author of numerous books and law review articles on international law and international human rights topics. His memoir A Lucky Child: A Memoir of Surviving Auschwitz as a Young Boy was published in 2009.

Hans Corell, former Under-Secretary-General for Legal Affairs and Legal Counsel of the United Nations, Sweden

Hans Corell served as Under-Secretary-General for Legal Affairs and the Legal Counsel of the United Nations from March 1994 to March 2004. In this capacity, he was head of the Office of Legal Affairs in the United Nations Secretariat. Before joining the United Nations, he was Ambassador and Under-Secretary for Legal and Consular Affairs in his native Sweden’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 1984 to 1994. From 1962 to 1972, he served first as a law clerk and later as a judge in circuit courts and appeal courts. In 1972, he joined the Ministry of Justice, where he became a Director in 1979 and the Chief Legal Officer in 1981. Corell has been a member of Sweden's delegation to the UN General Assembly 1985-1993 and has had several assignments related to the Council of Europe, OECD, and the CSCE (now OSCE). He was co-author of the CSCE proposal for the establishment of the International Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, which was transmitted to the UN in February 1993. In 1998, he was the Secretary-General's representative at the Rome Conference on the International Criminal Court. Since his retirement from public service in 2004, Corell has been engaged in many different activities in the legal field, inter alia as legal adviser, lecturer, and member of different boards. Among other activities, he is involved in the work of the International Bar Association and the Hague Institute for the Internationalisation of Law. In January 2006, he gave the keynote address at the fourth Brandeis Institute for International Judges, held in Dakar, Senegal. He was Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law at the University of Lund from 2006-2012. He is the author of many publications. His website is at http://www.havc.se. (Click here to read an interview with Hans Corell conducted on March 9, 2006.) Corell was a member of a Commission of Jurists appointed in 2012 to inquire into the cause of the death of UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld, who was killed in an aircraft crash in 1961. (The Commission's 2013 report is available here.)

Jamie F. Metzl is a partner in the global investment holding company Cranemere LLC and a Senior Fellow at the Asia Society. He was recently appointed Honorary Ambassador of the Korean Ministry of Trade, Industry, and Energy. He was formerly the Asia Society's Executive Vice President and responsible for overseeing the institution's strategic directions and overall program activities globally. Dr. Metzl has extensive government experience including service in the White House, the Department of State and U.S. Senate. In 2004 he ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. House of Representatives from Missouri's Fifth Congressional District in Kansas City. Dr. Metzl's government appointments have included Deputy Staff Director and Senior Counselor of the United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senior Coordinator for International Public Information at the Department of State, and Director for Multilateral and Humanitarian Affairs on the White House National Security Council during the Clinton Administration. At the White House, he coordinated U.S. government international public information campaigns for Iraq, Kosovo, and other crises. A Khmer speaker, he was a Human Rights Officer for the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) from 1991 to 1993, where he helped establish a nation-wide human rights investigation and monitoring unit for Cambodia. The author of a non-fiction book on human rights in Southeast Asia and the novel The Depths of the Sea (St. Martin's Press), his writing on Asian affairs, virtual reality, human genetic engineering and other topics has appeared in The New York Times, Foreign Affairs and many other publications and he is a regular commentator in national and international media including the BBC, CNN, and Fox News. His novel Genesis Code: A Thriller of the Near Future was published by Arcade Books in 2014. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a founder and Board Co-Chair of the bipartisan national security organization Partnership for a Secure America, and a former White House Fellow and Aspen Institute Crown Fellow. He serves on numerous charitable boards and holds a Ph.D. in Southeast Asian history from Oxford University, a juris doctorate from Harvard Law School, and is a magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Brown University. Dr. Metzl has completed seven ironman triathlons and 25 marathons.

﻿Zia Mody, Partner, AZB & Partners, Mumbai, India

Zia Mody is a prominent Indian legal consultant, considered an authority on corporate merger and acquisition law, securities law, private equity and project finance. Mody's initial education was at Elphinstone College, Mumbai. She went on to study law at Selwyn College, Cambridge University, followed by a master’s degree from Harvard Law School in 1979. Mody worked for five years with Baker & McKenzie in New York City before starting her own practice in Mumbai, which she merged twice with other firms to form AZB & Partners, one of India's largest law firms, where she is the Managing Partner. She was also a member of the Chandrasekharan SEBI Committee on the Rationalization of Investment Routes and Monitoring of Foreign Portfolios. Mody was also a member of the RBI Nachiket Mor Committee on Comprehensive Financial Services for Small Businesses and Low-Income Households. Mody is the daughter of well-known Indian jurist Soli Sorabjee. She is a director of the Hong Kong & Shanghai Banking Corporation, Hong Kong. She is the parent of Brandeis alumna Aarti Mody '10, and a founding supporter of the Brandeis-India Initiative.

Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, President of the Center for Strategies and Security for the Sahel Sahara

Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah has devoted himself to African development and conflict management throughout his professional career. Between 1969 and 1984, Ould-Abdallah held several posts with the Mauritanian government, including minister of foreign affairs, ambassador to the United States, and ambassador to the European Union. In 1984 he began work within the United Nations as the special coordinator for Africa and the least developed countries, and subsequently (1993-1995) as the special representative of the secretary-general in Burundi. He has authored many publications, including La Diplomatie Pytomane (1996) and Burundi on the Brink (2000), a detailed account of his experiences with the United Nations from 1993 to 1995. Ould-Abdallah was previously the executive secretary for the Global Coalition for Africa, an intergovernmental forum dedicated to addressing and promoting Africa's political and economic reforms. He is currently President of the Center for Strategies and Security for the Sahel Sahara. He previously served as Special Representative of the Secretary General for West Africa and as Special Representative of the Secretary General for Somalia. In January 2006, he gave the keynote address at the Western African Judicial Colloquium in Dakar, Senegal, a gathering coordinated by the Center of 12 West African high court judges and four international judges.

﻿John Shattuck, President of Central European University, Budapest, Hungary

John Shattuck, President of Central European University, has a career that spans more than three decades in higher education, international diplomacy, foreign policy and human rights. Before coming to the Central European University, he was CEO of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, a national public affairs center in Boston; and Senior Fellow at Tufts University, where he taught human rights and international relations. Shattuck served as Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor under President Clinton, playing a major role in the establishment by the United Nations of the International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia; assisting an international coalition under UN authority to restore a democratically-elected government to Haiti; and negotiating the Dayton Peace Agreement and other efforts to end the war in Bosnia. Subsequently he served as US Ambassador to the Czech Republic, working with the Czech government to assist in overhauling the country’s legal system, and with Czech educators to support innovative civic education programs in the country’s schools and universities. In recognition of his human rights leadership, he has received the International Human Rights Award from the United Nations Association of Boston; the Ambassador’s Award from the American Bar Association Central and East European Law Initiative; and the Tufts University Jean Mayer Global Citizenship Award. Prior to his government service, Shattuck was a Vice-President at Harvard University, taught at the Harvard Law School, and was a Research Associate at the Kennedy School of Government. His career began at the American Civil Liberties Union, where he served as Executive Director of the Washington Office and National Staff Counsel and helped enact federal legislation to protect individual privacy and to enforce civil rights in the election process. He also handled a number of prominent civil rights and civil liberties court cases, including the representation of persons who had been targets of illegal surveillance during the Nixon administration.

Gillian Sorensen has served the United Nations in several key roles: Assistant Secretary-General in the U.N. under both Boutros Boutros-Ghali and Kofi Annan; Senior Advisor and National Advocate at the United Nations Foundation; and New York City Commissioner for the United Nations and Consular Corps under Mayor Edward I. Koch. She is a graduate of Smith College and studied at the Sorbonne. In 2002 she was a teaching Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School (Institute of Politics). She is an experienced public speaker, mediator and bridge builder. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Women's Forum and the Women's Foreign Policy Group. She is on the Board of the Roosevelt Institute and the USC Center on Public Diplomacy. In addition to her public service, she has been active in politics and was a delegate to three national presidential conventions. Thanks to her support, in 2015 the Ethics Center began offering a need-based Summer Earnings Replacement Grant to the undergraduate Sorensen Fellows to supplement their merit-based funding. The Sorensen Fellowship is named for her late husband Theodore C. Sorensen, the Founding Chair of the Ethics Center’s Board.

Norbert Weissberg, Chairman, Package Research Laboratory LLC and Stapling Machines Company LLC, New York

Since 1996, Norbert Weissberg has served as chairman and controlling shareholder of Package Research Laboratory, the nation’s largest licensee of the U.S. Department of Agriculture for inspection of wooden pallets and containers intended for export. During that time, he has also held the position of chairman and controlling shareholder at Stapling Machines Company, a manufacturer of machine tools. From 1998 to 2002, he was chairman of the Coca Cola Bottling Company of Israel, and for 12 years prior was president of Ascom Holding Inc., a holding company for seven operating companies owned by Swiss investors. From 1962 to 1965, he was president of Equilease Corporation, a national equipment leasing company that was later purchased by leading aerospace manufacturer Honeywell Corporation. In addition to the Ethics Center International Advisory Board, he is on the boards of Medical Development for Israel, the American Jewish Historical Society, the “New Group” Theater and the Brooklyn Historical Society. In 2013 he received the "Virtuoso Award" from Concert Artists Guild, recognizing his philanthropic work on its behalf, and has since become chairman of that organization. The Advocacy for Policy Change Initiative at Brandeis, designed to encourage citizens to bring moral and ethical insights to the process of making and revising laws, is supported by generous multi-year commitments from Weissberg and his wife, former Board member Judith Schneider.

Theodore C. Sorensen dedicated himself to serving the global community both as a public official and an international lawyer. For 11 years, he was policy advisor, legal counsel, and speech writer to John F. Kennedy. In those roles he helped to resolve the Cuban Missile Crisis, advance civil rights legislation, and influence the United States' decision to travel to the moon. He practiced international law for more than 36 years as a Senior Partner, and later Of Counsel, in the prominent U.S. law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, New York. Former chairman of the firm's International Practice Committee, he represented U.S. and multinational corporations in negotiations with governments all over the world, and advised and assisted a large number of foreign governments and government leaders. Sorensen authored the 1965 book Kennedy as well as eight other books on the presidency, politics, or foreign policy. He participated in 10 of the last 14 Democratic Party National Conventions and was appointed by President Bill Clinton to the Board of the Central Asian-American Enterprise Fund (covering Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan) and the Commission on White House Fellows. In 2002, Sorensen was a Fellow at the Institute of Politics in Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. In 2003, he gave the keynote address at the second Brandeis Institute for International Judges, held in Salzburg, Austria. A graduate of the University of Nebraska College of Law, he was a member of the bars of New York, Nebraska, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. Supreme Court. His memoir, Counselor: A Life at the Edge of History, was published by HarperCollins in May 2008. In 2009 Sorensen was honored with the the National Humanities Medal, the highest national award in the humanities, as selected by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Theodore C. Sorensen passed away October 31, 2010. Read the Center's remembrance.

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